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NEWS BRIEFS
Zumba challenge offers opportunity to meet creator
HUNTINGTON -- Toni Karle is inviting everyone to get healthy and take the Zumba challenge.
The challenge, verbally endorsed by St. Mary's Medical Center marketing department, is part of an effort to promote healthy lifestyles and routine physical activity as well as prepare for an upcoming Zumba weekend featuring Zumba creator Beto Perez.
The Zumba challenge will be from Monday, Nov. 23, to Jan. 2, 2010. Area residents are invited to take the challenge for a chance to lose weight and win tickets to a class led by Perez.
In the challenge, participants will enroll in Zumba classes and track their weight loss over six weeks. Many classes are offered at various locations throughout the Tri-State at varying costs. The class must be a Zumba class (as registered by the Zumba trademark logo), and be taught by a certified Zumba instructor. Contest participants will be required to weigh in and provide bust-waist-hip measurements when they register and again at the end of the six weeks.
Each participant must attend at least two Zumba classes per week to qualify. Instructors will maintain their own records. At the end of the six-week period, each instructor will submit one name of a participant with contact information who shows the most significant weight loss or loss of inches (tie breakers will be determined by the instructor) and send that name to tksaints@zoominternet.net. Each winner will receive a ticket to the Jan. 11 Beto Perez Master Class and a chance to meet the Zumba creator at a private VIP reception.
Workshops with Perez will take place Jan. 9 through Jan. 11, 2010. Perez also will visit some elementary schools in the Tri-State.
The contest is exclusive to people in Cabell and Wayne counties in West Virginia, Lawrence County, Ohio, and Boyd County, Ky., or instructors within a 25-mile radius of Huntington.
The deadline to register with participating certified Zumba instructors is the week of Nov. 23, 2009.
With so many people already participating in Zumba across the area, Karle said the next couple of months are a time of celebration.
"It's really changing people's lives," she said.
Karle said she was diagnosed with breast cancer a couple of months ago, but even that couldn't stop her from moving. She has continued to teach five classes each week, even while going through chemotherapy.
"Zumba has kept me going. It really has given me such a positive outlook," she said.
